Constructing Home Monitoring System with Node-RED

• Published in: Sensors and materials Vol. 32; no. 5; p. 1701
• Main Authors: Lu, Chine-Yu, Chen, Fei-Hsu, Hsu, Wen-Chiung, Yang, Yu-Qiang, Su, Te-Jen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Tokyo MYU Scientific Publishing Division 01.01.2020
• Subjects: Air conditioning; Bedrooms; Data base management systems; Data transmission; Electric appliances; Electronic devices; Heat exchange; Household appliances; Hypertext; Monitoring systems; Nodes; Personal computers; Protocol (computers); Queues; Remote monitoring; Resource management; Smart buildings; Smartphones; Software; Switches; Telemetry
• ISSN: 0914-4935
• DOI: 10.18494/SAM.2020.2686

The aim of this study is to design a home monitoring system with a simple and clear visual interface that integrates home appliances, disaster prevention, and surveillance facilities. Furthermore, the Node-RED visual development environment was utilized to create the system, and the users will be able to configure the environmental parameters by themselves with its simple and graphical programming interface, to customize the user interface. In this study, we utilize the Node-RED development software installed on a personal computer and the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) to communicate and exchange data with home devices under the publish/subscribe mode, so that the stability of data transmissions can be ensured while more resources are saved; in addition, MySQL database management tools are used to access the data stored in the home devices for the statistics and analysis of changes in environmental data. Moreover, the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is also used to acquire various information from the government's open source data platform, and the information will be integrated and displayed on the Node-RED webpage interface. Since Node-RED uses a webpage interface, the devices that can use web browsers to view webpages, such as computers and smart phones, can thus be used to remotely monitor the Node-RED program. Finally, we utilize the Node-RED development software installed on a personal computer and MQTT to communicate and exchange data with the home devices under the publish/subscribe mode. The smart home system is divided into input and output parts, which control the electrical appliances and read the sensor information. Ten switches on the Web control interface are used to control the living room, kitchen, balcony, and bedroom light switches, air-conditioning, heating, exhaust fans, outdoor lights, doors, and alarm switches.